Marketing, advertising & media intelligence

Google has released its half-yearly list of the most watched YouTube ads by New Zealanders, with Hyundai being the most eyeballed by us. An ad by FCB New Zealand also made it onto the list with its ad for Sony featuring Rambo the ‘octographer’.

The YouTube leaderboard is calculated using an algorithm that factors in paid views, organic views and view rate (how much of a video people chose to watch), according to Google.

Here’s the list:

1) Hyundai: A Message to Space

This ad is about Stephanie from Houston who misses her astronaut father who works at the International Space Station. She comes up with a message which is written by the tyre tracks of 11 Hyundai Genesis and delivered to her father in space. The message has been officially recognised as “The largest tyre track image” by the Guinness World Records.

2) Pandora: The Unique Connection

Pandora carried out a small experiment to illustrate women’s uniqueness. It got six women and asked them to blindfold their children. The children were guided towards the group of women and were asked to choose which woman was their mother according to their senses and intuition. The children aged three to nine succeeded in finding their mothers.

3) Sony: World’s First Octopus Photographer

Sony and FCB gave Rambo the octopus a camera and taught it how to take photos of visitors to Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium. Rambo used the Sony cybershop TX30 underwater camera. Visitors were able to make a $2 donation to the Sea Life Trust at scheduled times to have their photo taken by the cephalopod.

4) Adidas: There will be Haters

Haters gon’ hate is one of the take home messages from this Adidas ad which features footballers Gareth Bale, James Rodriguez, Luis Suárez and Karim Benzema with their shiny new boots. And while punters may not be able to easily achieve their success, they can at least own the shoes.

5) Lego: City Swamp Police - The Wild Chase Mini Movie 3D

Though this ad is dubbed as a “mini movie”, one could almost picture it being a full-blown feature film. The graphics are great, the plot is fun and the action exciting. In this story two crooks are fleeing from a bank robbery. When they see an abandoned demolition site they think they’re safe but every direction they turn new dangers await them, including swamp-dwelling alligators and the Swamp Police.

"If the ad is captivating enough, people on YouTube will keep watching. New Zealand's most watched ad of the first half of 2015 is over four minutes long, and the average duration of ads on the leaderboard is over two minutes,” says Google New Zealand country manager Tony Keusgen. “The ability to engage with customers online using long-form content is a great opportunity for brands who want to tell a deeper story."

"Online, great ideas are rewarded. Hyundai's epic 'Message to Space' ad has now had almost 70 million views globally - a giant leap for Hyundai,” Keusgen says.

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Delving into it a bit more, you say that lots of people have drawn things using gps. That would be ok if you leapt from miscellaneous drawings to the idea of drawing dicks. But this didn’t. This went from drawing ...

I'm afraid it kind of is man. The drawing of dicks using the maps was someone else's idea. It was then repurposed for a advertising purpose. And let's not pretend that the creatives who 'repurposed' it didn't see the original ...

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